Author: Meryl Chittethazhathu Anil

Eden Project – Final post

My internship at the Eden Project ended on the 12th of August, and I am now back in Reading missing the Cornish countryside tremendously. The whole internship experience at Eden was an incredible one. I have had some great experiences and met some amazing people and I consider myself very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with such an esteemed charity.

Carrying on from the previous blog post, by the time my internship had officially ended I had completed the Nuclear Energy masterfile entry and submitted it to Jo, the Director of Interpretations. I am now awaiting feedback on the document. I had not yet completed the Geothermal Masterfile entry as I still had to finish the referencing. However, the research was all complete and Emma and I spent my last week at Eden compiling all of our research into a storyline. The storyline skeleton consisted of key questions: What is geothermal energy – how it works; Why geothermal energy is a good idea and Why is Eden interested in using geothermal energy. For each section, two levels of detail was required. Firstly, the whole section needed to be summarised in three sentences. Secondly, all further additional detail needed to be summarised in 8 bullet points. Overall, this constituted as the backbone for the storyline. This would then be passed on to the graphics team who would pick out certain aspects which sound interesting and would appeal to the public in creating their designs. After sending our proposed storyline to Jo, we had a follow up meeting where she made edits and told us where we need to change what. This was the last ‘official’ meeting during my internship. I have since, completed the geothermal masterfile entry and also edited the geothermal storyline according to Jo’s requests.

During my last week I also had my ‘End of internship’ interview, wherein I sat with Jo and Sarah – my supervisor –  and went through my ‘Start of internship’ interview questionnaire wherein I had written down my objectives, what I hope to contribute and accomplish during my internship, to compare what I had set out to do and what I had actually done. During the discussion we filled out an ‘End of Internship’ questionnaire. The interview went smoothly, I had achieved most of what I had set to do. However, I had underestimated the time it would take to complete two masterfile entries and therefore had not had any time to work on the ‘New and Emerging technologies’ section which I had included in my starting questionnaire. However, Jo and Sarah were very understanding about the time limitations and so this was not an issue.

On my last day, I had a goodbye lunch with Jo and Emma.  It was a great end to the internship, I got to speak with Jo and explain what charity insights was as she was very interested in the scheme and was keen on introducing it to other universities. Afterwards, I bought some chocolate ladybugs – very Eden – for everyone in the office and left after saying goodbye to whoever was still at the office late Friday evening.

Overall, the experience was invaluable. I have now a good grasp on what it is like to work for an educational charity, their work ethics and their problems and issues especially with communicating and engaging the public. Whilst volunteering at charities such as Oxfam before, I was always in the front end i.e. serving customers or working in the shop, helping with layout and gift aid. This was an eye-opening experience as now I  have a good idea about what happens in the back end of charities and the massive amounts of research, teamwork and cooperation that must go into each campaign/project that they produce. Alongside this insight, I have also gained numerous soft skills such as working in a team and interacting with other teams; setting personal deadlines; researching a large topic and picking out relevant information; summarising complicated processes in easy to understand terms amongst various others. To put it short working at Eden has been an experience of a lifetime.

Eden Project – checkpoint (2 weeks in)

It is the 28th of July, 2016 and it has now been two weeks since I started my internship at the Eden Project. At the start of my first week I had a plan about working on the Nuclear and Geothermal research for the Masterfile and also to keep researching new and emerging technologies’ on the side.

Between the 12th of July and now a lot has happened. At the start of the second week I spent two days on the ‘Welcome week’ meant for new volunteers and employees. This was very useful as it gave me more information the amazing stories behind how Eden came to exist, about what Eden was trying to do as an educational charity and how they were going about doing this. This also helped me to become more familiar with the site and the different people that work in different departments around Eden. I was also very fortunate to be able to sit in on a meeting with Jo Elworthy, the Head of Interpretations and Augusta Grand, Eden’s Head of Policy, while they were discussing Eden’s proposed geothermal plant. This was also very insightful as me and a fellow intern, Emma, who was also at the meeting are supposed to be working on Eden’s geothermal story.

With regards to my research and my work on the Masterfile I have now completed the first draft of the Nuclear story and have worked on summarizing the information into a possible story-line for the exhibit. I separated my research into nuclear into the following sections: History of Nuclear, Nuclear power production process (Fission and Fusion), Challenges with Nuclear Power and Solutions to Nuclear Power. In the midst of these sections I included current worldwide data of energy productions, and other nuclear statistics predominantly from the International Atomic Agent’s website and reports. The story-line is the information that will be on the information boards and leaflets and whose goal is to make the general public interested in the topic and its issues. For my story-line of Nuclear Power, I decided to add a section on popular myths and misconceptions to dispel popular myths about nuclear power production and radioactivity in general. I then sent my draft to Jo for feedback.

I have since decided to take a break from Nuclear and work on the geothermal story especially since Jo, told us that this story will be of more importance to Eden. This is because of the fact that Eden is planning on building the UK’s first deep geothermal plant, and would like to inform the public about the geothermal story and get them interested in what Eden is trying to do and how it would potentially benefit them. The research for the geothermal story will be done by both me and Emma. I will gather research on the more technical aspects and the general background to geothermal power production, whereas she will be working on Eden’s link to geothermal energy and the story from their point of view. Essentially my part of the research will follow the same skeleton as the research I undertook for nuclear power. I have since completed the ‘History’ and ‘Geothermal power production’ sections and am now working on summarizing the pros and cons of using geothermal energy as a means to generate electricity.

Over the past two weeks I have learnt a tremendous amount. I ran into several problems, mainly with directing my research. I realized after speaking to my supervisor after a few days since I started on my nuclear research that I was going into detail in places that were not required. I have since learned the kind of material I should be looking towards by walking around site, looking at the kind of information they have on their current exhibits and speaking to my supervisors and other interns. Now, having started on geothermal energy, the research is going more smoothly as I now know what kind of information I should look for. The other problem I encountered was creating a story-line. This involves having to summarise all the research in a topic into easy to understand terms, to make it interesting and attention grabbing. I struggled with simplifying the nuclear research into something anyone would understand but in the end I just kept at it, and tried using my 15 year old sister to tell me if anything was too complicated. I have also started making daily targets that I ensure are complete before I leave for the day.

Finally, working in the office amongst all the other employees and seeing their interactions with each other has given me a very deep insight into how the work environment at a charity is. Everyone is enthusiastic about their job and cooperate with everyone else in the team to get the work done. Small things stood out to me such as the fact that whenever someone went to make tea, they asked everyone if they wanted one too. I got a chance to see this teamwork and enthusiasm to a great extent as this past week was the week where Eden was setting up their Dinosaurs exhibit. The compilation of months of research was being put onto an exhibit and all in one week. It was very inspiring to see how everyone in the office left on the last day to help out on site, with the setting up of the exhibit. It gives you a feeling of everyone enjoying their work and wanting to make it a success.

For the remaining weeks, I will finish up the Nuclear story and my part of the Geothermal story and hopefully finalise the whole story together with Emma, the other intern. I also, hope to actually start some research on new and emerging technologies. I have not yet had time to research this section even though it is of interest to me due to a lack of time especially since spent time going into too much detail at certain points.

To finish, here are some pictures of the beautiful Eden project that Emma and I took over the past two weeks, including the new dinosaur exhibit!

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Eden Project Internship – First Day

The Eden Project mostly known as a popular visitor attraction in beautiful Cornwall. It is famous for having the largest captive rainforest its Rainforest Biome and also for it’s Mediterranean Biome. Additionally, they have the popular Eden Sessions during summer, which are concerts held at its main stage. However, mainly Eden is an educational charity that aims to reconnect people with the natural world and with each other. They do this by using leaflets, informational boards and interactive exhibits around the site.

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The project I am involved with at the Eden Project is called ‘Life Givers’ and it aims to communicate the worlds’ and in particular Eden’s energy story using a trail of sculptures and other art-based exhibits. These exhibits will show the range of ways people harness energy and the steps taken towards a carbon-neutral world. The end result will be a physical trail along Eden’s Zigzag pathway with the exhibits serving as checkpoints. At each exhibit there will be information on boards to explain the nature of the exhibit, with further information in a trail guide which will be available at the start of the trail.

My main role in the project will be to work with the interpretations team in collecting all the necessary information that will eventually be condensed onto the boards and the trail guide as a story line. The research conducted will be collected into a ‘Masterfile’; a scientific document which will serve as the backbone for the whole project. This will need to be properly referenced and coherent so that it can be understood by partners of the project and other friends of Eden and also for gaining the correct permissions for material printed for the general public.

12th July 2016, was my first day as an intern at the Eden Project. I met up with Sarah Peake my contact and supervisor at Eden at 10am, at the Foundation Building of Eden. On meeting Sarah, who was so friendly I was immediately put at ease. I was taken to where my desk will be, and was briefly introduced to fellow interpreters and other teams working at Eden. I was then given a tour around the building. Later, we sat down in the staff room dining area and discussed the project. I was given a folder which included a draft proposal for the Masterfile, a content research brief and  an ‘Eden Internship Objectives’ questionnaire which will act as a personal guide to what I should be doing at each stage of my internship. I was then taken to be given an Eden Badge(yay!) which included a photograph(not so yay) and was then given time to read through the proposal for the Masterfile so that I could clarify any doubts I had over lunch.

For lunch we were joined by Jo Elworthy, who is the Director of Interpretations and a fellow intern who is also working on the Life Givers project. After lunch, Jo went over the proposal in more detail – as she was the one that actually wrote the proposal – and explained each section in detail. We were also treated to a few lovely and unbelievable stories about Jo, her life and how she got involved with Eden. After lunch, I was shown around the Eden site and the easiest ways to get to the Foundation building from the site.

After returning to the Foundation building, I set to work with the draft of the Masterfile. Sarah then signed me up for a Welcome Week programme the following week and I was told that I could work on any area that I would like to despite initially being proposed the energy story of Eden- the relationship with Eden and their energy provider Good Energy. After separating the proposal into sections to organise my thoughts and adding a few notes of my own, I decided to start working on the Nuclear and Geothermal story of Eden and then venture onto the story with Good Energy. I decided to also try do some work on the new and emerging technologies with respect to energy.

For the following weeks, I hope to finish both the Nuclear and Geothermal Masterfile entries. This will involve sections for each including its history, the process, any challenges and their solutions if any. However, I believe the emerging technologies section will take longer as it will involve more reading than the other sections as the range will be wider. This I plan on keeping up throughout my stay at Eden, as it depends on how many articles I read and if I come across any new developments.